Dia de Madre a la Guaro

I hate to write about dancing again, but it feeds into a bigger issue, which is that everything I do is apparently cause for laughter or chisme (gossip). Today, I was excited to wake up with a tentative plan for the afternoon- helping my host mother make pasteles (basically fried dough filled with some sort of rice mixture) for the school bake sale. (My host mother is one of the cooks at the school.) Anyway, if I do something well it’s funny and if I do something badly it’s funny too. I started off rolling out the dough in less than perfect circles. Then, when I switched to stuffing the pasteles with the rice mixture, it was “take a picture and send it to her novio!” When I finished this task, I asked for another (this is my strategy for getting through the next two years- stay busy). One cook then turned to my host mother to ask, “can she chop?” My host mother responds, “yes, she chops for me.” This indirectness drives me loca. More than once, I have been in a situation where someone has asked someone else for my name or some other piece of information about me when I am sitting right next to them. “My name is Kathryn,” I always jump in curtly.

But back to dancing. So I just faced another impromptu, unplanned, unanticipated Friday night dance and thought I would be safe sitting at the door selling food. Nope. I can’t even tap my foot without being called out. They laugh. They point. “Are you going to dance?” “We’ll see,” I always say. I buy food at the bake sale and I get laughs. “Your teeth are going to fall out,” someone said when I ordered a fried dough-type pastry. I felt like saying, “I don’t put four heaping cucharaditas in my coffee twice a day.”

I think the real reason that I am uncomfortable with the dancing scene here is because it goes hand in hand with the guaro (general term for hard liquor) scene. Adults and young adults alike get giddy like guilas (general term for any child, but also used to refer to groups of guys or groups of girls) on Christmas Eve when faced with the possibility of drinking guaro. I was invited to a Mothers’ Day (Mothers’ Day in Costa Rica falls on the 15th of August) party on Thursday for the mothers of the sixth graders, who will graduate in December. Upon arrival, I realized thay this was just another excuse to drink guaro, as is every holiday, party, birthday. “Get close ladies,” the host said, “so we can drink guaro!” Giggles followed. The best part was that the “guaro” they were referring to was the Costa Rican equivalent to a bottle of Andre champagne (flash back New Year’s at Moots). After a cheers, they sipped their shot of “guaro”, meanwhile making comments about where they would crash later that afternoon; joking about someone having finished theirs before everyone else. When they brought out bottles of Pepsi and Ginger Ale, instead of frescos of tamarindo, moro, or limon, I should have known something was up. In the center of the table appeared a smaller Pepsi bottle filled with a questionable liquid (flash back parties in the tri-bar). “Who wants guaro?” Did I mention it’s 3pm and we’re celebrating Mothers’ Day?

Back to work- so I am still not over the fact that I singlehandedly got nearly 40 people to attend my FODA last week. When I say singlehandedly I must admit I am a little bitter and proud at the same time. I am bitter because it should not have been an independent effort. I made invitations and distributed them to all of the committee leaders in my town, as well as made and hung posters in the pulperias advertising the event. Days before, I visited the committee leaders and other friends to remind them of the date and time. I bought the fresco and galletas and arrived early to assemble five tables and set up 30 chairs. Meanwhile, I was thinking to myself, am I not a stranger in this town and in this country? How is it that I am here setting up for an event that I will facilitate in Spanish in a community that has no real alliance to me? I might have written before about the laziness/apathy factor, which I was strongly considering when I was in the store debating whether or not to buy refrigerio for 30, knowing full well that if it rained that night I was going to be eating cookies and drinking fruit punch for weeks.

Perhaps I did not give myself enough credit. Or perhaps I did not give my community enough credit. The majority of the people I invited, from friends to neighbors to committee leaders, showed up- and not on “tico time” (this is typically ½ hour late). Representatives from the following committees were present: the Catholic Church, sports, crafts, emergency, roads, health, women, children’s rights, aerobics, development, and nutrition. It is also noteworthy that poor communication, egoism, and lack of unity are among the greatest problems faced by the community of Ortega. As such, I was extremely pleased to see both friends and foes seated around the same tables. (This was after I had to ask them to come and sit with the group.) It was even more striking to see them participate in (and enjoy) an icebreaker I insisted on doing.
While I was upset to have had to have asked for feedback from my counterpart group- I am still unsure as to whether or not they understand that the activity and my work here is intended to be supportive of their initiative, which is community development-, I received nothing but positive commentary from all of the attendees. The hard part comes next week, when I will get them together again to analyze their needs, wants, and obstacles so that we can rank them according to feasibility, cost-effectiveness, time and resources needed, and utility. My goal is to keep the discussion going as long as possible- I would like to continue with biweekly meetings because it is a unique opportunity to get many of the major players in town in the same place at the same time. Fast forward two years and this would certainly be a major success, as organizational development is one of our principal goals as Rural Community Development volunteers.